Last year when the snow melted, it was great to pack up our winter coats, breathe in that new earth smell, and feel that first hint of warmth return to the valley. But this year, the sight of the snowmelt dripping off the roof, tiny sprouts pushing up and out of the flower beds, green leaves uncurling on the aspens, it all fills me with dread.
It’s spring. Between now and summer, my mother will leave us.
In the latest dream I’m in the cemetery, walking up the hillside among the graves on a sunny day. Looking at the people around me, I realize that this crowd is largely made up of the congregation. Walter holding a handkerchief. Billy, who doesn’t look sad in the least, cheery even, and smiles at me when I catch her eye. Mr. Phibbs in a gray tweed sport coat. Then there are others who I don’t recognize, angel-bloods from other parts of the world, people my mom lived and worked with during her one hundred and twenty years on earth.
It seems so obvious now that this was about my mom. Why couldn’t I see that from the start?
The answer is simple: because Tucker never shows up. Never. Not in any of the visions. Not this time, either. I try to ignore my growing sense of betrayal, that there could be no possible reason that’s good enough for him not to be there at my mother’s funeral. He’s not dying, which is a huge relief. But he’s not there.
If only there was something that this vision’s telling me to do, an action to take, some sense of—pardon the pun—purpose in all of this, a way to train and plan and prepare the way I did for the forest fire. But the dream doesn’t seem to be telling me to do anything but to get ready for the biggest loss of my life. I feel like a bug waiting under God’s enormous shoe, and all this dream is telling me, all it’s leading me to, is to show up and stand there and wait to be crunched.
If I ever do get to meet God, the way Mom used to talk about, then He’s going to have some serious explaining to do, is all I’m saying. Because this just feels mean.
In the dream, we reach a place near the top of the hill where everybody stops. I walk like I’m underwater, one slow foot in front of the other. As the crowd parts to let me pass, something starts to freeze up inside of me. I stop breathing as I take the final steps. I think, I don’t want to see.
But I do see, and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of my mother’s coffin, a rich and gleaming mahogany-colored coffin, topped with a mass of white roses.
I have the weirdest thought at this moment. I can’t tell if it’s me or future-Clara, but I think, Did Mom pick the coffin herself? It’s so her. I imagine her coffin shopping, strolling around a showroom eyeballing coffins the way she does antique furniture, sizing them up, finally glancing over at the salesman and pointing to one and saying, “I’ll take this one.”
This one.
My vision blurs. I sway on my feet. Christian’s hand abruptly leaves mine. He steps closer to me, encircling my waist with his arm, steadies me. Then his other hand, his right hand this time, returns to mine. He squeezes briefly.
Do you need to sit down? he asks gently in my mind.
No, I reply. My sight clears. I stare at Jeffrey, who’s gazing at the coffin so intently I think it could burst into flames, fists clenched at his sides. At first I want to look everywhere but at the coffin, and then when I do, when I cast around it, all I get are people’s faces, searching eyes, sympathetic expressions. I force myself to focus on a single white rose. The light is filtering through the trees at an angle, which strikes this one small rosebud, just beginning to open its petals, a perfect glowing white.
Then the sorrow comes, a wave of grief so fierce I struggle to suppress the choking sound in the back of my throat. I feel strangely detached, floating away. Someone moves to the other side of the coffin, clears his throat. It’s a red-haired man with solemn hazel eyes. It takes me a second to place him. Stephen. A priest or something. He meets my eyes.
He wants to know if you’re ready, says Christian in my mind.
Ready?
For him to start.
Please. Yes.
Stephen nods solemnly.
“Dearly beloved,” he says.
That’s when I check out. I don’t hear what he says as he goes on in his slight Irish brogue. I’m sure he’s saying good things about my mother. About her wit. Her kindness. Her strength. Words that couldn’t even begin to describe her.
I focus on the rose.
The sorrow grows, expanding like a frozen lake inside me. Soon they will lower the coffin into the ground. They will cover it with earth. My beautiful, spirited, sweet Meg will be gone forever. . . .
My heart leaps. This isn’t like the sorrow attacks I had before. These are words, and they’re not my words. Not my sorrow, or my feelings.
There is a Black Wing here, after all.
Samjeeza.
I’m suddenly über-aware of everything. I feel the breeze against my bare arms. Birds sing distantly in the trees. I smell pine, roses, wildflowers. I search all the faces around me, some of which are gazing back mournfully, but I don’t see Samjeeza. His feelings are coming through loud and clear now. It’s him. I’m sure of it. He is watching us from a distance and can’t stand how we can gather so near her grave to say good-bye in her last moments above earth. He loved her, he thinks. He loved her and he’s furious that he lost her, after all these years of waiting for her. He hates us. If his hate were the sun, it would burn us all to ash.
“Okay, everybody, let’s calm down,” says Billy, looking around the circle of angel-bloods who are gathered in the meadow around the campfire. “This is really no big deal.”
“No big deal?” exclaims a woman from across the circle. “She told us that a Black Wing will be at Maggie’s graveside.”
“Maybe she’s wrong. Black Wings can’t enter cemeteries. They’re hallowed ground,” says someone else.
“Is Aspen Hill hallowed, though? It’s not a traditional cemetery. There’s no churchyard.”
“It is hallowed. Others of our kind are buried there,” Walter Prescott says.
Christian meets my eyes across the flickering flames.
I’m not making this up, I send to him as practically the entire congregation starts arguing again. He was there.
I believe you.
“People, please.” Billy raises her hand, and amazingly everybody begins to quiet down. She smiles with the confidence of a warrior princess. “This is one Black Wing we’re talking about, and it’s Samjeeza, who’s probably there to grieve for Maggie, not to fight. We’re all going to be there. We can handle this.”
“I have children to think about,” says a woman stiffly. “I won’t put them in unnecessary danger.”
Billy sighs. I know she’s this close to rolling her eyes. “So don’t bring them, Julia.”
“And there could be more of them,” someone else announces loudly. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s always dangerous,” rings out an authoritative voice. Walter Prescott, again. “Black Wings could come for any one of us at any time. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
Mom casts a knowing look at Walter.
“How long has it been?” asks Julia, the woman with the kids. “Since you’ve had contact with Samjeeza?”
“We’ve been over this. I hadn’t seen him in fifty years, until this past summer,” Mom says.
“When he happened upon your daughter at Static Peak,” someone else supplies. “And you defended yourself using glory.”
“That’s correct.”
So they all know about it. It’s like there’s an angel tabloid, and I’ve been on the front page. It makes me feel guilty, somehow, like if it hadn’t been for my purpose and my flying over the mountains that day, scouting for the fire, we wouldn’t all be caught up in this unpleasant conversation about fallen angels and where it’s safe for us to be.
“You told us that you didn’t think he’d be back anytime soon,” Julia accuses. “You said he was injured.”
So much for them all treating my mom with reverence, I think. But it makes sense now. It wasn’t reverence, before. It was pity. They all knew that she was going to die, and they treated her like she was delicate, breakable. They weren’t treating her like their leader. They were treating her like an elderly woman. Which now, since her death might turn out to be dangerous or inconvenient for them, is apparently yesterday’s news.
“He was,” Mom answers smoothly. “I was able to grab hold of him while I was in glory, and I took off his ear. I thought he was too vain to show himself until he was fully healed.”
Again with her not wanting them to know the full story of what happened that day. It’s a bald-faced lie. I look at her sharply, but she doesn’t even glance in my direction.
“So he’s healed, then,” Julia says.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “What I do know is that Clara feels his presence in the cemetery.”
All eyes turn back to me.
“You’re sure,” Walter says, not really as a question. “You’re sure it was this Black Wing’s sorrow you felt and not simply grief over your . . .”
“My mother’s death?” I finish for him, surprising myself with how calm I sound. “No. It was him.”
For a minute or two nobody says anything else.
“So tell us, Clara.” Walter again, his eyes that are so like Christian’s, deep pools of emerald, trained on me like he wants to pluck this information right out of my head. “What did you feel, in your dream, at the cemetery? What did he feel, exactly?”
“Sorrow,” I answer slowly. I don’t want to get Mom into trouble or embarrass her further, by telling them that Samjeeza is in love with her.
“Just tell them,” Mom says. “Don’t worry about me.”
Okay, then. I close my eyes, cast myself back to that moment in the dream, trying to recapture his feeling.
“I feel sorrow. Separation. Pain. And you’re right, I thought it was me at first. But then I started feeling his despair. He knows he’s never going to see my mom again. He can’t go where she has gone. He’s lost her, forever. He never got a chance to plead his case. To make amends.”
“He should have tried to make amends last summer, then,” Billy says hotly, “instead of trying to choke the life out of her.”
Mom looks at her with a mournful, pleading expression, and Billy quiets.
“The point is,” I continue, “he’s angry. At some of us, specifically.”
“Who?” Julia asks.
“Well, me, for starters. He thinks I’m an insolent child. I humiliated him. I said things that hurt him.” I shiver. “He wants to destroy me. I remind him of . . .”
“Who else?” Mom prompts then. “Tell them who else.”
“Mr. Phibbs—I mean Corbett. For some reason he really hates you.”
“Glad to hear it,” says Mr. Phibbs gruffly.
“He’s not too fond of Billy either. Or you, Walter.”
Billy snorts. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
“That’s why I thought it’d be appropriate for you to know. So you can decide whether it’s worth the risk to attend my funeral,” Mom says.
“Oh, we’re all going to be there,” Billy insists. “Like I said, we can handle Samjeeza. He wouldn’t take on forty of us.”
The rest of the group doesn’t look so sure.
“We’re all going to be there,” Billy says again, like she’s daring someone to cross her. “We stand by each other.”
Mom sighs in exasperation. “Bill, I’m not going to be standing anywhere. I won’t be there. It’s very nice for you to pay your respects, but it’s really unnecessary. Not worth the risk, if you want my opinion.”
Billy doesn’t bat an eye. She turns to my mom, my serene and dying mother, who wouldn’t have had the strength to hike out here to the meadow without us helping her, who can hardly keep herself sitting up straight now, and Billy looks at her like she’s a total moron.
“Mags, sweetie,” she says. “I know that. It’s not for you, dear. We’re going to be there for Clara. For Jeffrey. For everyone else who loves you. And if there’s a Black Wing, it’s all the more reason for everyone to be there. To protect them.”
Mom closes her eyes. “It’s only a funeral.”
“It’s your funeral,” says Billy, slinging an arm around her affectionately. “We love you. We’re going to take care of your kids.”
There’s another wave of whispering from the crowd, this time in agreement.
“I don’t think the funeral is really the issue here,” Mr. Phibbs says suddenly.
“So what is?” Billy asks.
“Clara says Samjeeza is at the graveside. And that he’s hurting, sure, as Black Wings are like to do. But she also says he’s mad at us. I’d say the larger question here is, what are we going to do between then and now to piss him off?”
Okay, so that ruffles more than a few feathers. People start arguing again.
“The last time one of us fought a Black Wing, she ended up dead,” that Julia lady says. “And she sacrificed her life so that the Black Wings wouldn’t find out about the rest of us, in case you forgot.”
This time Christian does not meet my eyes. He’s looking down into the crackling fire.
“We didn’t forget,” Walter says in a low voice.
“It’s understandable that you’re afraid,” says Mr. Phibbs. “But that was seven years ago. We’ve become sleepy since then. Sleepy and safe.”
“You’re careless, Corbett, but you can afford to be,” Julia replies. “You don’t have anything to lose, since your time is almost up, yourself.”
Mr. Phibbs regards her like a troublesome student. “Maybe that’s true,” he fires back. “But we’re at war, in case you’ve forgotten. You can ignore that and go on with your human lives in your human houses and your special camping trips in the woods a few times a year, but the reality is, we’re angel-bloods. This is a war. We’ve been chosen to fight.”
His words ring out in the cool night air, which has gone suddenly still.
“Stop,” Mom protests. “I’m responsible for this mess with Samjeeza, and no one else.”
“Mags, dear, be quiet,” Billy says.
I look around the campfire. Mr. Phibbs is right. Everyone knows he’s right.
“I’ll be there, at the cemetery,” says Christian suddenly, fiercely. “It doesn’t matter who else shows up.”
“As will I,” says Walter, clapping a hand on Christian’s shoulder.
“And me,” pipes up someone else. “To the end.”
They go around the circle, each angel-blood vowing to be there in Aspen Hill Cemetery that day. Even Julia begrudgingly agrees. When it gets to Jeffrey, who hasn’t said anything this entire weekend, he shrugs and says, “Kind of a given, right?” and then Angela says, “Bring it on,” and then it’s me and I just nod, because I’m suddenly too choked up to get the words out. Then our impromptu meeting is adjourned, everyone going back to normal, except that there’s a new energy in the air, because we are angel-bloods, and we aren’t cowards, and we’ve been given a call to battle. Mom looks exhausted and Billy escorts her back to our tent, then returns to the fire to where the other members of the inner circle are gathered to discuss, I assume, what they’re going to do about this situation. I glance over at Mr. Phibbs, who’s still sitting in the circle, leaning back with a pleased expression on his face.
“You’re a troublemaker, you know that?” I tell him.
He raises his scraggly white eyebrows. “Takes one to know one.”
I laugh, but later, when everyone else is asleep, I keep going over what he said. That we’re meant to fight. That this is a war. And that would put me, and Jeffrey, and Christian, and Angela and all the people I care about, right smack in the middle of it.
In the morning there’s this crazy-loud angelic trumpeting, and everyone gets up for the sunrise. This time they haven’t planned an official meeting. We had enough talk last night, Stephen says. He waves us all, even those of us who are not official members, into a circle in the middle of the meadow.
“We want to take this moment to honor Margaret Gardner, as this is the last meeting that she’ll be able to attend,” he says when we’re all assembled. I look for Jeffrey, but I don’t see him. He’s probably sneaking in some extra fishing or something, which makes me mad. He should be here for this.
Mom bows her head and steps into the center of the circle. Everybody summons their wings. Stephen puts his hand on the snowy feathers at Mom’s shoulder.
“You have been a faithful servant and an inspiration to us all,” he says. “We give our love to you, Maggie.”
“Love to you,” murmurs the rest of the congregation, and we all close in, the other members of the inner circle each laying one hand on her wings and one hand on the person next to them, the rest doing the same to the person in front of them, back and back until we make a great web of angel-bloods with my mother at the center. The sun breaches the mountain, casting her in a pool of radiance, a combination of sun and glory that almost hurts my eyes to behold. The meadow fills with an angelic hum, and then the hum becomes a word in Angelic, the word love, I think, coming across in that multitoned music of the language of angels, or maybe it’s a combination of words, everyone saying a different word that ends up all meaning the same thing, something that transcends translation.
I realize I’m crying, tears sliding down my face and off my chin and falling down into the grass at my feet. And I’m smiling. I have a sense that no matter what, no matter what darkness lies ahead, there is nothing that can overcome this power.
All it takes to punch a big old hole in that joy is seeing Mom struggle as we hike back to the car, Jeffrey, Billy, and I flanking her so we can catch her if she starts to fall. It’d be easier to fly, but we all have gear to carry, which is cumbersome, and Mom’s not safe to fly alone. She keeps saying she’s fine. She’s not. She’s sweating, and twice we have to stop to rest.
“What’s the point?” Jeffrey spits out when we’re stopped the second time.
“The point?”
“The point of the whole congregation. It’s not like they really do anything. It’s not like they could heal her.”
“Of course not,” I say, although the thought did cross my mind, what with all the light and power spilling everywhere and the fact that glory heals people, maybe somewhere deep down I’d hoped that Mom would be miraculously saved, at least strengthened for a few days or something. But eventually that spectacular light faded into regular sunshine, and the congregation dropped their hands, and Mom went back to dying. “Don’t be a jerk, Jeffrey. The congregation cares about us, or weren’t you there when they all said they were coming to Mom’s funeral?”
“We’ll see,” he replies like he couldn’t care less. “We’ll see who actually shows up.”
“They do come.”
“Why, because you saw them in your dream?”
“Yes. I saw them.”
“And what if your dream doesn’t mean anything?” he asks with sudden bitterness. “What if it’s only a dream?”
“It’s a dream, yes, but it’s also a vision,” I say irritably. “Of course it means something.”
“You think it’s part of your purpose?”
I stare at him. I wish I knew the answer to that question.
“It’s the future,” I say.
Jeffrey’s eyes are a blaze of silver fire. “What if it’s not? What if it’s a practical joke somebody’s playing on you? Maybe we don’t even have a purpose, Clara. Just because someone told you that you were put on this earth to do something, to be something, doesn’t make it true.”
I don’t know what’s gotten under his skin, but I do know that he’s questioning everything we’ve ever been taught, and it bothers me. “You don’t believe Mom?”
“Right, because she’s been so upfront with us so far.”
“Hey, what are you two arguing about over here?” Billy interrupts, jogging over to us from where she left Mom sitting at a picnic table at a campground under the trees. “Do I need to break this up?”
“Nothing,” says Jeffrey, turning away from her. “Are we ready to go yet? I have homework I have to do before tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we can go. I think she’ll make it the rest of the way,” Billy says, looking at me. I study the laces of my hiking boots. I wonder if Mom heard any of that. I wonder if what Jeffrey said hurt her, each bad thought, each doubt like a dart striking her. I swallow painfully.
“Everything okay?” Billy asks.
I lift my head and try to smile and nod. “Yeah. I’m good. I just want to go home.”
“Okay then, let’s go,” she says, but as Jeffrey moves away from us, she grabs my arm. “Keep your chin up, okay?”
“I know.”
“Storm’s coming, kid,” she says, smiling in a way that reminds me of how she looks at my mother’s graveside. “I can feel it. Things are going to be rough. But we’ll make it.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me, right?”
“Right,” I answer, nodding.
Even though the truth is, not all of us are going to make it, and I don’t know what to believe.